The New York Bureau

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By:Daryl Khan | March 2, 2015

NEW YORK — The filmmaker could not get the number out of his head. Even while he was traveling the country to discuss “Shell Shocked” — a movie about children killing children with machine guns in the streets of his hometown New Orleans — it was a number that kept John Richie up at night.

After a classroom of children were found in a lifeless pile, shot to death by Adam Lanza in Sandy Hook, Conn., with an assortment of guns including a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle, the country was awash in research and polling and charts about Americans and their guns. Continue Reading →

By:Meral Agish | January 20, 2015

NEW YORK — The image and words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could be seen and heard everywhere the Dream4Justice march went, from Harlem to Midtown, Monday afternoon. But as the marchers walked a slow and peaceful four miles over as many hours, King’s voice mixed with the protesters’ now familiar chants: “I have a dream” alongside “I can’t breathe” and “No justice, no peace.”

King’s memory brought organizers and protesters together but the marchers’ demands came from more recent deaths. In memory of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and others who had been killed by police, the march ended near the United Nations to bring attention to police brutality as a human rights issue. Marchers called for immediate policy change at the city and state levels in keeping with King’s philosophy. “We are non-violent but we are not peaceful,” said Tamika Mallory, an organizer and board member of The Gathering for Justice. Continue Reading →

By:Daryl Khan | December 22, 2014

NEW YORK — It has been more than 20 years since the day Nicholas Heyward Jr. was shot by a police officer while he was playing cops and robbers as a 13-year-old with his friends in the stairwell of the Gowanus Houses in Brooklyn. Continue Reading →

By:Meral Agish | December 22, 2014

NEW YORK — Each story is unique in its own way. A phone call before work. One last football game before heading out of town. A bachelor party before a wedding. Then a call or a knock on the door and life would no longer be the same. Continue Reading →

By:John Spina | December 17, 2014

Friends and family of 35 alleged gang members from west Harlem filled the courthouse today. But decisions never came, leaving families frustrated and suspects awaiting judgment amid hostile tension in jail. Continue Reading →

By:John Spina | December 16, 2014

NEW YORK — Residents of the Grant and Manhattanville housing projects in west Harlem have been subjected to a deadly gang rivalry spanning generations. This past June, the New York Police Department unleashed a squad of more than 500 police officers to raid the housing complexes and make arrests.

Six months later, the alleged gang members – ages 15 to 30 – wait to receive their sentences Wednesday. The NYPD maintains that arresting more than 100 potentially violent criminals in one fell swoop was a triumph.

Family, friends and neighbors wonder if this is simply a stopgap solution. Continue Reading →

By:Theresa Fisher | November 14, 2014

NEW YORK — Ruben Rodriguez, a teen from the Bronx, is on Rikers Island, waiting to stand trial for homicide. By the time he returned to the Box (punitive segregation) in late September, City of New York Correction Department Commissioner Joseph Ponte publicly promised to end punitive segregation for Rikers’ roughly 300 juvenile inmates by 2015. Continue Reading →

By:Theresa Fisher | November 12, 2014

NEW YORK — Ruben Rodriguez walked into the Robert N. Daveron Complex (RNDC), the main adolescent house on Rikers Island, in a faded stone-colored jumpsuit on April 25. A number of inmates whom he recognized from his previous sentence, bristled with fear, but also showed respect and pity when Ruben said he was back on murder charges. Continue Reading →

By:Theresa Fisher | November 7, 2014

NEW YORK — On June 17, Ruben Rodriguez got two brightly colored envelopes in the mail. His grandmother had sent a card with a silly cartoon. His mother wrote a more sentimental message on her card and tucked a folded piece of loose-leaf inside it. That was a letter from a girl letting Ruben know she was pregnant with his child and planned to get an abortion. Continue Reading →

UPDATE: 'Prominent Lawyer Takes Case of Bronx Boy Allegedly Pushed Through Window by Police'
NEW YORK — The 14-year-old boy sat on the stoop of Hookah Stop in the Bronx, blood pouring from his chest and filling his lungs, and thought: This is what it’s like to die.

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UPDATE: 'Prominent Lawyer Takes Case of Bronx Boy Allegedly Pushed Through Window by Police'
NEW YORK — The 14-year-old boy sat on the stoop of Hookah Stop in the Bronx, blood pouring from his chest and filling his lungs, and thought: This is what it’s like to die. Moments before 11 o’clock Saturday night, the boy, Javier Payne, had been smashed through the store’s plate glass window by a police officer who had stopped him after an altercation with a man on the street, witnesses said.

From The Chicago Bureau:
For years, the sex trade was "their" problem, a heinous part of culture in poorer nations. But attention here to sex trafficking has slowly increased in recent years with the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and other federal state laws.